Friday, October 14, 2016

Finding Rest In Spain

As most of you know I am in Barcelona! (Yah!) I have been here for over a month and I will be here for about 3 months. Currently I am volunteering with YWAM (Youth With A Mission) and am staffing a 3 month long school for artists and creatives. The school is facilitated in a way where we have speakers come in from all over the world, every week to teach and challenge the students in their art or craft; proposing thought provoking ideas and questions but always bringing the focus back to how we can use our passions and gifts to glorify God and share Gods love with humanity in a powerful way. We will be putting on art expositions every couple weeks through out the city to reach out and share our creations with the community and connect with people on a deeper level using the universal language of art.

And I apologize for my lack of keeping everyone up to date with what we have been doing! Barcelona has been fun, it is a lot different than I expected. The first couple weeks was lots of rest after a long year of almost no rest. My first month here has involved lots of "pruning", as my friend Brooke would say. Pruning as in taking the time to reflect on where I am in life and cutting off old habits and ways of thinking. It's just been a very intense and fast time of growth. Which some of you may know isn't always easy, in fact most times it hurts, a lot. Just like when you're in those awkward teenage years where your legs throb from growing and all you wanna do is sleep. That kind of sums up a lot of this past six weeks. Tons of growing pains and lots of rest (which is really hard for me, all I wanna do is go, go, go).

Since the school has started though it's been full of joy and inspiration. Even though I'm staffing and helping lead students, I've been so deeply inspired by speakers who have come in and out of our classroom. I'm inspired by peoples lives and how they have pursued their dreams, how they've joined God in "co-creating", and how many amazing and impossible things they have created and accomplished by partnering with God. Needless to say, so many of my dreams and ideas over the last few years have become more solidified in a matter of weeks. I still don't know when I'm leaving here or where I'm going to end up, but I know wherever I Mike and I find ourselves we are gonna hit the ground running!

-Grace

xo

Night of my birthday after eating the best ramen where we couldn't hear each other talk because the restaurant was so loud

View from our flat // That is La Sagrada Familia in the distance

Nomad Coffee Shop

My favorite coffee shop and plant store Espai Juliu // I LOVE plants!

Being a tourist for a second at the Arc de Triomf

Dancing the night away // Film shot by Mike Penhale

La Marcè Festival // Film shot by Mike Penhale

La Mercè festival has been celebrated in Barcelona for hundreds of years. The Catholic church made this festival as a time when the "gates of hell" would open so they could scare people into salvation. The towns people would go to the church and pay money to get saved so that they wouldn't go to hell when they die.
What I experienced was quite similar...other than the church collecting money for salvations. There was a huge wooden door surrounded by boards shaped and painted as flames where huge mythical creatures with people inside walking them would come out of the gates shooting fire from their mouths. "Demons" or people dressed us a little Satans ran around with sparkler torches dancing with attendees and shooting fire at peoples feet. There we also many drum bands walking down the street following the demons and mythical creatures.
This is probably the craziest thing I've ever seen!